We must pro­tect re­gion’s wa­ter­ways: NPD

With its mon­ster bud­get bill, the Con­ser­va­tive gov­ern­ment is aban­don­ing the pro­tec­tion of Canada’s nav­i­ga­ble wa­ters, said the re­gion’s New Demo­crat MPs.

All ref­er­ence to the en­vi­ron­ment will be re­moved from the Nav­i­ga­ble Wa­ters Pro­tec­tion Act, re­duc­ing the num­ber of pro­tected lakes and rivers from 30,000 to less than a hun­dred.

“There is no rea­son to put the en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion of wa­ter­ways on the chop­ping block,” said Pierre Ja­cob (Brome-Mis­sisquoi) this morn­ing at a press con­fer­ence at Au­berge Quil­liams on the shores of Brome Lake, one of the un­pro­tected bod­ies of wa­ter. “Ev­ery­one ben­e­fits from the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion: why change it so rad­i­cally?”

“Even worse: more than 90% of these bod­ies of wa­ter are lo­cated in rid­ings rep­re­sented by Con­ser­va­tive MPs,” said Pierre-Luc Dusseault (Sher­brooke). “This casts doubts on the par­ti­san­ship sur­round­ing these cuts.”